LITMIR.BIZ

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out there, am I?”

      She could tell from the tone of his voice that he was trying to distract her from her worries. “It’s not the bears that scare me.”

      “You don’t have to go now. We can wait for a bigger search party.”

      She looked him over, head to foot, gauging his mettle. His gaze met hers steadily, a hint of humor glinting in his eyes as if he knew exactly what she was doing. Physically, there was little doubt he could keep up with her pace on the trail, at least for a while. He looked fit, well built and healthy. And she wasn’t in top form, having lived in the lowlands for several years, not hiking regularly.

      But did he have the internal fortitude to handle life in the hills? Outsiders weren’t always welcomed with open arms, especially by the criminal class he’d be dealing with. Most of the people were good-hearted folks just trying to make a living and love their families, but there were enclaves where life was brutal and cruel. Places where children were commodities, women could be either monsters or chattel and men wallowed in the basest sort of venality.

      She supposed that was true of most places, if you scratched deep enough beneath the surface of civilization, but here in the hills, there were plenty of places nobody cared to go, places where evil could thrive without the disinfectant of sunlight. It took a tough man to uphold the law in these parts.

      It remained to be seen if Doyle Massey was tough enough.

      “You want to wait?” she asked.

      “No.” He gave a nod toward the trail. “You’re the native. Lead the way.”

      Copperhead Ridge couldn’t compete with the higher ridges in the Smokies in terms of altitude, but it was far enough above sea level that the higher they climbed, the thinner the air became. Laney was used to it, but she could see that Doyle, who’d probably lived at sea level his whole life, was finding the going harder than he’d expected.

      Reaching the first of a handful of public shelters through the trees ahead, she was glad for an excuse to stop. She’d grabbed some bottled waters from the diner when she and Ivy left, an old habit she’d formed years ago when heading into the mountains. She’d stowed them in the backpack she kept in her car and had brought with her up the mountain.

      Now she dug the waters from the pack and handed a bottle to Doyle as they reached the shelter. He took the water gratefully, unscrewing the top and taking a long swig as he wandered over to the wooden pedestal supporting the box with the trail log.

      She left him to it, walking around the side of the shelter to the open front.

      What she saw inside stole her breath.

      “Laney?” Doyle’s voice was barely audible through the thunder of her pulse in her ears.

      The shelter was still occupied. A woman lay facedown over a rolled-up thermal sleeping bag, blood staining her down jacket and the flannel of the bag, as well as the leaves below. Laney recognized the sleeping bag. She’d given it to her sister for Christmas.

      Janelle.

      The paralysis in Laney’s limbs released, and she stumbled forward to where her sister lay, her heart hammering a cadence of dread.

      Please be breathing please be breathing please be breathing.

      She felt a slow but steady pulse when she touched her fingers to her sister’s bloodstained throat.

      “Laney?” Doyle’s voice was in her ear, the warmth of his body enveloping her like a hug.

      “It’s Janelle,” she said. “She’s still alive.”

      “That’s a lot of blood,” Doyle said doubtfully. He reached out and checked her pulse himself, a puzzled look on his face.

      “She’s been shot, hasn’t she?” Laney ran her hands lightly over her sister’s still body, looking for other injuries. But all the blood seemed to be coming from a long furrow that snaked a gory path across the back of her sister’s head.

      “Not sure,” he answered succinctly, pulling out his cell phone.

      “Can you get a signal?” she asked doubtfully, wondering how quickly she could run down the mountain for help.

      “It’s low, but let’s give it a try.” He dialed 911. “If I get through, what should I tell the dispatcher?”

      “Tell them it’s the first shelter on Copperhead Mountain on the southern end.” Laney’s hands shook a little as she gently pushed the hair away from her sister’s face. Janelle’s expression was peaceful, as if she were only sleeping. But even though she was still alive, there was a hell of a lot of damage a bullet could do to a brain. If even a piece of shrapnel made it through her skull—

      “They’re on the way.” Doyle put his hand on her shoulder.

      But they couldn’t be fast about it, Laney knew. Mountain rescues were tests of patience, and a victim’s endurance.

      “Hang in there, Jannie.” She looked at Doyle. “Do you think it’s safe to move this bedroll out from under her? We need to cover her up. It’s freezing out here, and she could already be going into shock.”

      She saw a brief flash of reluctance in Doyle’s expression before he nodded, helping her ease the roll out from beneath Janelle. She unzipped the roll, trying not to spill off any of the collected blood. The outside of the sleeping bag was water-resistant, so she didn’t have much luck.

      “Sorry to ruin your crime scene,” she muttered.

      “Life comes first.” He sounded distracted.

      She looked up to find him peering at a corner of something sticking out from under the edge of the bedroll. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and grasped the corner, tugging the object free.

      It was a photograph, Laney saw, partially stained by her sister’s blood. But what she could still see of the photograph sent ice rattling through her veins.

      The photo showed Janelle and her two companions, lying right here in this very shelter, fast asleep.

      Doyle turned the photograph over to the blank side. Only it wasn’t blank. There were three words written there in blocky marker.

      Good night, princesses.

      Chapter Three

      Doyle hated hospitals. He’d visited his share of them over the years, both as a cop and a patient. He hated the mysterious beeps and dings, the clatter of gurney wheels rolling across scuffed linoleum floors, the antiseptic smells and the haggard faces of both the sick and the waiting.

      He hated how quickly everything could go to hell.

      He sat a small distance from Laney Hanvey and her mother, Alice, a woman in her late fifties who, at the moment, looked a decade older. Mrs. Hanvey looked distraught and guilty as hell.

      “I shouldn’t have let her go camping. It was so stupid of me.”

      Laney squeezed her mother’s hand. “You don’t want to stifle her. Not when she’s made so much progress.”

      Doyle looked at her with narrowed eyes, wondering what she meant. But before he’d had a chance to form a theory, the door to the waiting room opened and a man in green surgical scrubs entered, looking serious but not particularly grim.

      “Mrs. Hanvey?” he greeted Laney’s mother, who had stood at his entrance. “I’m Dr. Bedford. I’ve been taking care of Janelle in the E.R. The good news is, she’s awake and relatively alert, but she’s sustained a concussion, and given her medical history, we’re going to want to be very careful with that.”

      Doyle looked from the doctor’s face to Laney’s, more curious than before.

      “So the bullet didn’t enter her brain?” Laney’s question made her mother visibly flinch.

      “The titanium

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